Here again were all his old companions,--the
chipping-birds, his cousins, old grandfather Rubra, and, best of all,
his dear mother. But the odd thing about it all was, that nobody seemed
to know him: even his mother, though she stretched her arms towards him,
turned her head away, looking here and there for her lost baby, and
never seeing how he stood gazing up into her face. Now he began to
understand why the chipping-birds said, "They never came back! they
never came back!" for they truly came in so new a form that none of
their old friends recognized them.
Every thing that has hands wants to work; that is, hands are such
excellent tools, that no one who is the happy possessor of a pair is
quite happy until he uses them: so Alba began to have a longing desire
to build a stem, and lift himself up among his neighbors. But what
should he build with? Here the little feet answered promptly, "You want
to build, do you? Well, here is carbon, the very best material; there is
nothing like it for walls; it makes the most beautiful, firm wood. Wait
a minute, and we will send up some that we have been storing for your
use."
And the busy hands go to work, and the child grows day by day. His body
and limbs are brown now, but his hands of a fine shining green. And,
having learned the use of carbon, these busy hands undertake to gather
it for themselves out of the air about them, which is a great storehouse
full of many materials that our eyes cannot see.
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